


To Those I Was

by starsapart



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Gen, Haiseneki deserves happiness, Introspection, Mostly angst but there's hope at the end, POV Second Person, Sasaki Haise Is Kaneki Ken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 16:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2659043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsapart/pseuds/starsapart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You love yourself. You hate yourself. You are your worst enemy.</p>
<p>Who are you?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Haise: Forget Who I Was

You don’t hate pain the way you did when you were younger. Back then you were many things, but afraid above all. Many things paralysed your usually very capable brain. You didn't want to hurt others. You didn't want to be left behind. You wanted people to love you, you wanted to protect them, and failing to do those things was unforgivable. It was like failing life.

You say back then, and you say younger, but you only have a vague idea and no one who will tell you what you need to hear. It scares you, this thing, this _monster_ inside you. You hate those memories that come from nowhere, filling your nights and making them stretch longer and longer each time, until your eyes have permanent black bags underneath them. It’s nothing but a reminder that you are not the sole owner of this body. You want it gone. If you were a bit braver, or maybe a lot more cowardly, you’d have made yourself go long ago. But you have a duty you can’t let go of.

In the beginning, it was easy to paint them as nightmares. “It’s just the brain trying to cope with what you've seen and done,” you told yourself, night after night. After weeks and months. But you are smart, and you figured out soon enough that those were not memories. They didn't fade away like normal dreams. And you _felt_ it, god, the longing, the pain and the happiness, all mixed together, and you knew, even if the memories were faulty as memories often are, those feelings were real. Yet for the longest time, you ignored it and kept looking forward.

Never look back, you told yourself. Back is dangerous. You have no doubts that if you ever dare voice your thoughts it would bring you big problems, and you have enough of those as it is. You said them out loud once, though, because saying things out loud makes them real. If it’s real, you are not insane. It’s simple.

The person you refuse to let yourself believe you used to be, loathed pain. It had been everywhere, like bad weep creeping in through the cracks of a wall. Like a pest, infesting what should have been happiness with its insistent present.

But then, you learnt to appreciate pain. It was a reassurance, of sorts. A constant, like happiness never was. You can get used to happiness, but pain will never let you forget. Pain is faithful, pain will never leave you. You can trust pain to be with you forever.

You want to know who you were, but those feelings tell you some things are better left hidden. That’s a coward’s way out, but you want to be a coward. You don’t want _his_ strength. Cowardice is as solution a good as any. After all, being strong didn't do much good for you last time.

But it’s not you, not really. Those memories seem to come from someone else, maybe several someone’s. The difference between them is too big, you don’t really know what to think. Maybe you have Dissociative Personality Disorder. Maybe you really are insane. Thinking about those things makes you panic. You are not going to think about it.

There is an unbearable innocence, someone you’d shelter from all the wrongs in the world. There is someone you fear, so unstable you feel they could break in any moment, and break you and everyone around you in the process. And lastly, there is an incongruence. Fragility desperately seeking strength, someone who wants to protect but needs to be protected.  

You wonder who you are in this circus of personalities. Are you the one who has finally accepted fate? Are you the one who is strong and weak, protects and is protected? Probably not, you've come to think. They might – and _might_ is an important word – be part of you, and you _might_ accept them as such, but you hate them. Even if they’re real, this is your mind now. They have no right to be here, whispering in your ear in the dead of night.

The voices are growing increasingly desperate, and your hatred only grows. Does this mean you hate yourself? You know you do. You can only respect the one who lives in daylight, the others are just parasites leaching off your sanity. Why are they still here, you wonder. You want them gone.

So, here you stand. Pain is your companion, and you know things you are sure were meant to kept hidden from you. How do you continue? Can you, even? Time moves forward, dragging everyone with them, even the reluctant and the unwilling. Time gets rid of those who can’t go on. You want to go on, but dragging those ghosts is becoming increasingly more difficult.

You don’t believe in ghosts, but popular culture tells you that ghosts are spirits who are still bound to the land of the living due to some unfinished business. Maybe they are here because you took over too soon, before they fulfilled their mission. Maybe they didn't want to go, and are trying to make your life impossible until you have to surrender to them.

Your mind is trying to drive you out of your mind. You've seen stranger things.

You've seen real monsters, you've fought them and defeated them. You have prevailed, not because you are strong and they are weak, but because that’s the way it was meant to be, the natural order of things. People are created equals and you should treat them as such, you think.

Those monsters look like people, but they are not. They only bring death and pain with them, and yes, you can greet pain like an old friend, but you are a possessive friend. You don’t wish for pain to be friends with anyone else. The solution is simple to understand but hard to execute. Exterminate the vermin.

You earnestly ignore that your team is a bit monstrous, and that you yourself are more than a little bit monstrous. But they are humans, first and foremost, and sometimes for the sake of humanity, sacrifices need to be made. They all are those human sacrifices. You need to trust those who know more than you, to know the reason for which they were chosen, because you know they can handle this inhuman power in a human way.

And you, well, you choose to be human. Even if there’s a monster inside you, you shut it down because you _want_ to be human. Please.

You trust others, but you don’t trust yourself. There will come a day in which you will have to give up the space in your mind, and you know it. A day in which the instinct of survival will be greater than your will, and you will let the strong one do what he knows. He will take over and he will not let go, however much you kick and scream, because you will fight it. It will be useless, and you will fail.

You wish there was another way. You wish you could stop hating yourself, those other parts of yourself, but you are just too different. There is no hope for balance, and while you aren't one to give up before trying, you also aren't one to waste your time in pointless battles. As long as you can keep them under control for a bit longer, you will be fine.

(But sometimes in your dreams you see warm eyes and soft smiles. There are loving touches, even. Those times, it feels like happiness envelopes you, and pain is only there to serve as a reminder to treasure the good times.

So, yes. This is even a more private secret than the memories you shouldn't have. Sometimes, if you had a good day and the world feels like a place where justice reigns, just those times, you allow yourself to hope.)


	2. Kaneki: Remember Who I Was

It is dark.

It’s like a prison, like the punishment you always knew you deserved, for hurting so many around you in that reckless mission of yours. In a way, it’s a fate worse than death. Death at least it’s definite – one moment there is life and the next it’s gone – but you’re not so lucky. This limbo you’re in is a constant reminder that you’re at least something resembling alive, but not quite. You’re just there, forgotten. Ignored.

Is that how Rize felt? You wonder, but then again, that Rize you saw wasn't real. It was just your brain, confused and unable to accept the way your life had changed. You needed for there to be a reason, for the pieces to fit and a hidden meaning to appear, but this space has convinced you that there is no such reason, and same as it happened to you, it could have happened to anyone.

Even in your tragedy, you’re not special. Even inside your mind, you’re not the only one.

You’d like a chance to start over, but you’re not sure you’re going to get it. The one in control is stronger in a way you never could, accepting his helplessness he has defeated this particularly difficult enemy. He knows when to fight, and he knows when to give up. That’s a lesson you wish you’d learnt sooner. This is the result of your choices and your mistakes, and you can't help but wonder if you had been wiser you could have avoided it and none of this would have happened.

You've always had things taken away from you, so you did whatever it took to keep them. People too, dear, irreplaceable people, who left or whom you left, but always kept in your heart. Are they the strength you need or are they scars and ugly nightmares, keeping you trapped in the past, unable to move on? Love gives you strength but at the same time it makes you weak, and that’s the saddest of paradoxes that there has ever been. You wish you had never learnt to love.

In a lot of ways, hate is simpler. Straightforward, in a way love seldom is. To love, you have to forget to protect yourself. Put yourself at risk for someone else to destroy you. When you were human – and it feels a lifetime ago – you loved until your heart ached and bled. You loved until you physically could love no more, and found a way to do so anyway.

When Rize entered you and tainted your innocence, it became harder than it had ever been, but even then, in what you thought had been your darkest of hours, you set limits for yourself and kept the monster at bay. With a bravery that surprised even yourself, and a wild foolishness you see know, you tried to live as humanly as possible, kindly ignoring the voice in the back of your mind, soft spoken and filled with dreadful intentions. It kept telling you, over and over, how you were deceiving yourself. It was eating you from the inside out, like an infection. But you kept smiling and you kept loving.

You always knew your story was a tragedy, and you’d read enough of those to know how you would end. But you ignored it, as you ignored many things. You believed yourself, if not invincible, then as invincible as one could get. You were strong. You were so strong you even allowed yourself to break your very own unbreakable rules.

What a sad character you are, defeated by yourself.

You should have seen it coming. The strength you asked for came to you, but with a prize. All your plans of living as a human were destroyed, of course. By then, you’d learnt that the monstrosity came not from being a ghoul, but from the soul. Rize was a monster, and she made you one, too.

You survived that torture, all the while wishing you were dead. Those stares directed at you, loving and concerned, sad and hopeful, became a usual thing. You hated them, because you didn't deserve them. You weren't the person you were before you became a ghoul, and not even the one ghoul you decided to be. A human ghoul. A good ghoul.

How could you accept their love when you were like this? With your dignity and your sanity taken away from you, you became bare, your soul corrupted beyond repair. It shamed you so much, shame became meaningless.

The pain that was brought onto you burned permanently, and you discovered you enjoyed bringing it to others. You would have never thought of doing it while you were human, but those days were long gone.

Become strong.

Become strong.

Become strong.

Those weren't words said to you, but ones you repeated to make sure you wouldn't get hurt again. You thought there nothing worse than what the world had already given you, and you were proven wrong. You needed to be the one everyone relied on, and that make you weak. There is weakness everywhere, it’s inescapable.

You are glad you are not dead. You would be glad to be dead, though. You are not picky at this point.

Kaneki Ken is dead. You are a shadow, and that’s why you are stronger now than you could have ever hope to be, back then when you still had people you loved. You respect the one in the surface because you want to be him, you want happiness, but you know better now, so you won’t hope for things you can’t have.

But you do want to be useful. You want to escape this cold room, modelled after the one that saw when you decided the road that would lead to your downfall. You want to be the dark force that burns when it’s needed, and you want to be contained when it’s not. You don’t want the one in the surface to accept you.

Because now, the biggest irony, the most tragic of fates, is that you became the monster. You are now the same as Rize. Eroding the mind. Infecting the soul. Turning a good man, a kind, _human_ man, into a monster. There was never hope for happiness for you, it was gone the moment you entered into Anteiku. You can’t hate the place that became home, but you hate the fact it became home. You hate the fact you became a ghoul.

Rize doesn't haunt you anymore, there’s no need for that. The Rize in your head was never real, and the real one, at least the last time you saw her, was insane. Instead, you haunt yourself, isn't that interesting? Her monstrous nature will always live in you.

If he accepts you, then he’ll be corrupted. Your soul is so broken already, you don’t think it can take much more. You want him to reject you because that’s what’s good for him. But you are a monster and you want what’s good for you, and that’s being in control. You ask to be accepted hoping he rejects you, what can that be if not proof of how horrible you are?

He has friends, and you are jealous. He is respected, and you are jealous. All you have is this place from your nightmares, and repetitive dark thoughts. Nobody would blame you for wanting to escape for a little while.

It’s lonely here, and you want to see the outside world. The one you don’t belong in anymore, but desperately want to be a part of, if only just to say goodbye.

(The sweet boy you used to be is hopeful, despite everything. He believes there is a solution to this problem. He believes in the power of love and friendship. He thinks if you are kind enough, and if you try hard enough, there is bound to be a solution somewhere.

The corrupted you wants so badly to prove him right, that it can only mean one thing. Maybe, just maybe, there is hope.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We know Haise and Kaneki exist in the same body, but they aren't the same person exactly. A person is more than their body, they're their memories and experiences, the personality they have. They're the interior and the exterior put together. I think the story will probably progress to the point Haise will reconcile with the person he used to be, but for now he feels the same way Kaneki felt towards Rize at the begging of the series. The difference, in my opinion, is that Kaneki isn't a hallucination but a repressed memory, but a repressed self. So there is still traces of my sweet child in him, and that's why their thoughts mirror each other, but there is also a very big dissonance between them. If Haise and Kaneki, at least ghoul Kaneki, were two different people they'd be enemies, so it makes sense, seeing as they share a body, there'd be feelings of self hatred.
> 
> This series has broken me.
> 
> Also obligatory note, this is not beta'ed, English is my second language and I have a typo tendency. I did check it, but let me know if you catch any mistakes!


End file.
